Tuesday, January 31, 2023

What Does It Mean to Have a Rainbow Baby?



 I had a miscarriage after Zeke. It might sound terrible, but I wondered if the baby would’ve been born with birth defects again, and I just felt so grateful God took the baby before we had to watch them suffer like Zeke did.


But when I got pregnant with Sky, I worried the further along I got. The doctors said that since I’d had one baby die, the chances went up of it happening again. I thought about this as I drove through a storm one day, white knuckling the steering wheel in my pregnant paranoia. The weather seemed like my young life at times: beautifully tragic. If I could just get to the other side of that damn storm …


“Mama! Rain!” Ruby hollered from the backseat. Ruby was so tiny at the time, and she loved the rain, seeing the world in a magical sheen I once loved. I looked in the rearview mirror, studying her curls. Ruby was my lifeline. When everything else seemed awful or too hard to bear, that perfect angel kept me going.


I patted my huge belly. “I wish I could have some sort of sign that I’ll never have a baby die again.” I cried through the storm, and shortly after my words, I turned a bend. 


“Rainbow!” Ruby giggled. ”Two, Mama!” And she was right; we saw two huge rainbows just outside of the storm. I wiped away my tears, thinking how if we wouldn’t have traveled through the storm, we never would’ve appreciated the beauty of the rainbows. I told Ruby that, and she listened with her big, green eyes getting wider and wider.


I thought of God’s promise to Noah in Genesis, how He sent a rainbow to tell that old man He’d never flood the earth again. Maybe this was my promise from God.


“What should we name your sister?” I asked Ruby.


She stared up at the double rainbow and grinned. “Sky!” So, Ruby named her little sister, and the two have grown up to be best friends: my beautiful Ruby and Sky.


I thought about Sky, my rainbow baby yesterday. That’s actually what they call babies born after one who has died. Sky was quite sick yesterday, but she still came to talk with me and make sure I was okay because I’d been fighting a fever all day. She hugged me and asked if there was anything she could do. And after she’d taken some medicine and started to feel a bit better, she came and cheered me up. 


True to her rainbow baby name, Sky knows how to bring joy after any storm. She told me about the exciting things she did over the weekend and how happy she is about her inner growth. As she talked, I couldn’t help forgetting my fever and my sickness because she made me smile. I’m just so proud that she’s only 18 and she’s already begun to figure life out because she knows what really matters: love. So many people spend their lives trying to look for the pot o’ gold at the end up the rainbow; unfortunately, in their fight for status, meaning, riches, fame, and achievements, they forget the magic of seeing a rainbow at all. It’s sad, but the contentment that eludes them was there all along, the roadmap to a treasure that never even existed.


At one point last night, I glanced over at my second-oldest daughter and saw her giggling as she squatted, holding the cat (Milo) she got for her 11th birthday! I HAD to take this picture. 



It’s so true that life has its storms, but I’m grateful for the miracles that are waiting just around the corner if we have the courage and patience to look for them.

1 comment:

  1. I am reading a book now on how the Universe speaks to us, and one way is with rainbows. You have beautiful stories

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